Gypsum Cave is a

limestone cave A solutional cave, solution cave, or karst cave is a cave usually formed in the soluble rock limestone. It is the most frequently occurring type of cave. It can also form in other rocks, including chalk, dolomite, marble, salt beds, and gypsum. ...

in eastern Clark County,

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. N ...

, United States, about east of

Las Vegas Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...

, that is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

(NRHP).

Description

The cave contains six rooms and is measured at long by wide. The cave was first documented by

Mark Raymond Harrington Mark Raymond Harrington (July 6, 1882 – June 30, 1971) was curator of archaeology at the Southwest Museum from 1928 to 1964 and discoverer of ancient Pueblo structures near Overton, Nevada and Little Lake, California. Early life Harrington kne ...

in a 1930 edition of ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...

''. Up until about 11,000 BC (11,000

radiocarbon year Radiocarbon dating measurements produce ages in "radiocarbon years", which must be converted to calendar ages by a process called calibration. Calibration is needed because the atmospheric / ratio, which is a key element in calculating radiocarbo ...

s ago), Gypsum Cave was inhabited by the

Shasta ground sloth ''Nothrotheriops'' is a genus of Pleistocene ground sloth found in North America, from what is now central Mexico to the southern United States. This genus of bear-sized xenarthran was related to the much larger, and far more famous '' Megatheriu ...

. A few hundreds feet away, the Gypsum Cave Mine contains

gypsum Gypsum is a soft sulfate mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical formula . It is widely mined and is used as a fertilizer and as the main constituent in many forms of plaster, blackboard or sidewalk chalk, and drywall. ...

anhydrite Anhydrite, or anhydrous calcium sulfate, is a mineral with the chemical formula CaSO4. It is in the orthorhombic crystal system, with three directions of perfect cleavage parallel to the three planes of symmetry. It is not isomorphous with the ...

and

uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...

History

Human habitation of the cave dates to around 3000 BC. Harrington provided the first documentation of the contents of the cave following excavation in 1930-1931. Habitation occurred at the same time at other local sites like

Tule Springs Tule Springs is one of the larger urban retreats in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the Las Vegas Valley. It is a significant desert ecosystem consisting of a series of small lakes that formed an oasis in this area of the Mojave Desert. Both the springs ...

Lake Mojave Lake Mojave is an ancient former lake fed by the Mojave River that, through the Holocene, occupied the Silver Lake and Soda Lake basins in the Mojave Desert of San Bernardino County, California. Its outlet may have ultimately emptied into the C ...

and the Pinto Basin. The skull of the

ground sloth Ground sloths are a diverse group of extinct sloths in the mammalian superorder Xenarthra. The term is used to refer to all extinct sloths because of the large size of the earliest forms discovered, compared to existing tree sloths. The Caribbe ...

''Nothrotheriops shastensis'' Sinclair was found in Room 3 by the archaeologist Bertha Parker, who was Harrington's niece and served as expedition secretary. Excavators also found the dung, backbone, claws and reddish-brown hair of the now-extinct ground sloth (these and other bones from the cave are held by the

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is the largest natural and historical museum in the western United States. Its collections include nearly 35 million specimens and artifacts and cover 4.5 billion years of history. This large coll ...

). Through radiocarbon dating, it was found that the sloth remains date back to 11,000 BC and earlier. The dung has given information about what the environment and vegetation of the area was because the sloth was a herbivore. This ancient plant eater survived on capers, mustards, grasses,

agave ''Agave'' (; ; ) is a genus of monocots native to the hot and arid regions of the Americas and the Caribbean, although some ''Agave'' species are also native to tropical areas of North America, such as Mexico. The genus is primarily known for ...

yucca ''Yucca'' is a genus of perennial shrubs and trees in the family Asparagaceae, subfamily Agavoideae. Its 40–50 species are notable for their rosettes of evergreen, tough, sword-shaped leaves and large terminal panicles of white or whitish flo ...

, phacelia, borages, mints,

grape A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus ''Vitis''. Grapes are a non- climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters. The cultivation of grapes began perhaps 8,000 years ago, ...

globemallow ''Sphaeralcea'' is a genus of flowering plants in the mallow family (Malvaceae). There are about 40-60 species, including annuals, perennials, and shrubs. Most originate in the drier regions of North America, with some known from South America ...

, saltbushes and

ephedra Ephedra may refer to: * Ephedra (medicine), a medicinal preparation from the plant ''Ephedra sinica'' * ''Ephedra'' (plant), genus of gymnosperm shrubs See also * Ephedrine Ephedrine is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant that is of ...

. Most of these are still found in the area today, but the agave, yucca and grapes are only found at elevations 800 m and more higher, and close to water in the case of grapes. However, during the ice age, the climate was cooler and wetter. The geology of the area shows that the closest likely water supply was between away. In 1994, a sign, the Nevada State Historical Marker #103, was put up to indicate to tourists the way to the site. It was removed by the private owner of the Gypsum Cave, PABCO Mining Company, to avoid unwanted tourism on its grounds. In the early 2000s, the

Bureau of Land Management The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior responsible for administering federal lands. Headquartered in Washington DC, and with oversight over , it governs one eighth of the country's la ...

launched a survey for the construction of the proposed Harry Allen-Mead 500kV Transmission Line Project. Native tribes identified only 2 sites out of 56 that were highly significant to their culture, one of which was Gypsum Cave. The cave was listed on the NRHP on July 8, 2010. In 2017, a team of scientists conducting research on a skull found on-site by Harrington in the 1930s revealed it actually was a type of extinct, stilt-legged horse that died out during the last ice age (around 13,000 BC). The species was found not to be closely related to modern horses and was renamed ''

Haringtonhippus ''Haringtonhippus'' is an extinct genus of stilt-legged equine from the Pleistocene of North America The genus is monospecific, consisting of the species ''H. francisci'', initially described in 1915 by Oliver Perry Hay as ''Equus francisci''. Pr ...

francisci'' after Canadian scientist Charles Harington.The Associated Press
Fossil found in cave holds clues of ancient horse
''Nevadaappeal.com'', 1 January 2018

References

{{authority control Landforms of Clark County, Nevada National Register of Historic Places in Clark County, Nevada Archaeological sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Nevada Caves of Nevada